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“…because when a good fish rises to your offering, you feel like you’ve made a star shoot across the sky.”
Dave Karczynski fishes—and writes—with both eyes wide open to the magic of water. With the trademark blend of adventure, humor, and insight that has made him one fly fishing’s most widely published authors, this collection of nineteen essays charts Dave’s journey as he casts his way from the quiet streams of the Upper Midwest to the far corners of the earth—and back again. Readers will tramp across Patagonia with a shamanic brook trout whisperer, raft through the Himalayas in search of golden mahseer, hunt native brown trout in the Bohemian highlands, and revel in the promise of a Northern Michigan spinner fall.
But Calling After Water is more than just a travelogue or memoir. It’s also a book-long effort to plumb fishing’s deepest experiences, and in doing so to probe its many questions. What is the line that separates sanity from madness when it comes to winter steelheading? How does time behave differently for an angler tied tight to a raging muskie? And how would one go about quantifying, with the utmost philosophical rigor, the joy of catching smallmouth in the springtime? With prose that alternately flashes like the sides of a leaping salmon and glitters like riffle water on a summer morning, Calling After Water is one of those rare books that delights its readers as much as it invites them to reflect on their own love of fly fishing.
“Calling After Water invigorates the natural affinity I have had for lakes, rivers and streams since I was a young boy growing up amongst the Great Lakes. Karczynski has always been one of my favorite writers, and this book takes the game to another level. His prose is very much like my favorite little trout stream—cool, crystal clear, flowing with purpose, and most of all… pure.”
— Kirk Deeter
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Editor of TROUT
“Few writers can evoke the true emotional acuity attendant to angling. Dave Karczynski is one.”
— Sam Lungren
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Editor at Midcurrent
“I’m not a big fan of fly-fishing essays because I’m often disappointed that they just don’t capture what a river at sunrise is like. But I’ll read anything Dave Karczynski writes, about any subject. He always tells a great story that never falls flat, and is possibly the best young voice in fly-fishing today.”
— Tom Rosenbauer
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ORVIS
“What springs off the page is a sense of boundless joy, a feeling as if you are catching each fish yourself. I want to grab my gear, run out the door and experience each chapter for myself. Dave’s love of the sport bursts from each sentence, but his sense of overwhelming joy is what sets him apart.”
— Jason Tucker
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Fontinalis Rising
“I also love flyfishing, but the real beauty of Calling After Water comes down to exceptional storytelling. This is the result not just of good writing, but of ruthless, relentless re-writing—reviewing and revising each sentence until it has a rhythm and flow that can’t even be adequately described. Dave just knows it when he sees it. He doesn’t just fix “bad” sentences, he takes already great sentences and intuitively knows they can be better. And he makes them better. Enjoy this book and enjoy your fishing.”
— Tom Bie
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Editor of The Drake
“Great writers effortlessly transport their readers to places near and far flung, real and imagined, familiar and foreign. But great fly fishing writers go further, embracing and entrancing two often times disparate audiences — those who don’t fly fish and those who do.
Dave Karczynski is one of those great fly fishing writers — and Calling After Water is a testament to that fact…. a beautifully written and genuine look into a fly fishing life that leaves those who chase fish with streamers, dries, and nymphs in a daydream — and everyone else asking Google, “What do I need to start fly fishing?”
— Matt Smythe
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Author of Revision of a Man
“One of the finest compliments you can pay a writer is that they make the hard parts of the job look easy. Dave Karczynski is that guy. He finds perfect words and turns those words into electric phrases that light up the mind’s eye. And in Calling After Water, he delivers these lightning bolts with regularity. Simply put, Karczynski has the rare and remarkable ability to make words do what he wants them to do.”
— Steve Duda
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Author of River Songs
“Calling After Water means it’s time to spark that Fuente, take words to the porch, and enjoy a fly fishing stoke reel for the soul.”
— Greg Thomas
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Former editor of American Angler/Fly Rod & Reel
